Starling Bank Raises another £60M from Existing Backers

Starling Bank is a UK based challenger bank that was founded by the banking veteran named Anne Boden. Starling Bank recently has raised another £60 million from the existing investors named Harry McPike’s JTC and Merian Global Investors. This impressive investment has made Starling Bank getting a total amount of £323 million. Also, it follows two major funding rounds of £105 million in the aggregate, which has been led in 2019 by Merian.

Anne Boden told the FT that the two main backers of the bank own a vast fraction of the shares, and they are committed to further funding later this year. In addition to this, the new valuation of Starling is still unknown.

In the meantime, Starling had also disclosed that the customers had opened 1.25 million accounts, which include business and customer accounts since 2017 when the banking app was launched. Currently, it is holding more than £1.25 billion in deposits that is a crucial metric for any lending bank.

Starling says that their newer funding will support the continued extension, including a European launch plan, which was delayed due to the Brexit uncertainty.

Across the offices located in Southampton, Cardiff, London and Dublin, the bank has total of 800 employees. As a part of this raise, it reveals that it will issue even more shares to its employees. Based on the report provided by FT, Starling Bank staff and management will own 20% of the bank following the newer funding with the JTC and Merian controlling the remaining.